When it comes to the impending, ever-growing, list of diktats and edicts and threats Washington politicians and bureaucrats throw at us, perhaps you, like many here at MRCTV, feel a bit like Cassandra. She was the mythological Trojan lady who was cursed by Apollo to see what was coming in the future, while being unable to get people to stop the impending trouble. The myth was woven into 20th Century entertainment in the neat 1970s movie, “The Cassandra Crossing”… and it might apply to you in the 21st Century, as well.
Because, as you read MRCTV coverage of the Biden Administration banning the incandescent light bulb, threatening natural gas oven makers and consumers, threatening ceiling fan makers, pushing unmarketable “electric vehicles” and annoying “heap pumps”, you, too, might have spread the word, hoping that, someday, somehow, more coercive “regulatory” edicts could be stopped.
Sorry to say, fellow Cassandras, there’s more of that destructive locomotive, barreling at us.
Thomas Catenacci reports for FoxNews that the Biden Department of Energy on February 29 announced its “finalized energy efficiency regulations” targeting residential clothes washers and dryers, “in an effort to curb carbon emissions, as part of its broad climate agenda.”
Related: Biden's New Energy Regulations For New Year: Impact on Home Appliances (mrctv.org)
Meaning, an unconstitutional “Energy Department,” run by a less-than-trustworthy “DOE Secretary” Jennifer Granholm, finalized only its NEWEST set of diktats and edicts – before the next set are formulated in their tax-funded Leviathan Lab of bureaucratic brickbats and imposed on us next year or the year after…
Ain’t freedom grand?
The “regulations” will hit home clothes washers and dryers, forcing off the market some that currently are sold. And, of course, Granholm and the Bidenistas are promoting this as them “helping” us.
Perhaps you’re getting tired of the pain you repeatedly feel at the market when you see how they “help.”
Writes Catenacci:
“The new standards for washers and dryers, meanwhile, are the latest in a long string of energy efficiency regulations unveiled by DOE over the last 12 months. Climate activists have argued such regulations are necessary to combat global warming, noting that the commercial and residential sector accounts for the largest share of total end-use carbon emissions of any sector in the U.S.”
But, just as the claims of “anthropogenic climate change” have not been proven, and are associated with numerous scandals of data manipulation and a lack of debate, so, too, do the claims of “necessity” for the government impositions and threats.
It’s kind of like a mafioso bullying a store owner, telling him that he only can sell certain mob-favored items, then claiming the threat is “necessary” to prevent some terrible fate that the mobster made up. The real danger lies in the deranged mobster, and in not complying with his coercive commands.
Of course, this means that a bunch of products you used to see offered for sale either won’t be sold or they will appear to be the same but will be different, inside, and likely will cost more.
The regulations increase the minimum water and energy efficiency levels that washers and dryers must meet down the road in order to remain on shelves. In many cases, more energy efficient units do not work as effectively or quickly as older and less efficient models, O.H. Skinner, the executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
And if that’s not enough to get your blood boiling (careful, now, because you don’t want to use the wrong kind of stove to boil that blood) the subhead of the Granholm-DOE announcement might do the trick.
“Finalized Residential Clothes Washer and Clothes Dryer Standards with Strong Industry and Stakeholder Support, Bolstering Biden-Harris Administration Efforts to Strengthen Outdated Efficiency Standards to Save Americans ~$1 Trillion Over 30 Years”
Yes… “Stakeholder.”
That’s another term for “we, the government, decided who is a ‘stakeholder’ and engaged in fascism to ‘work with the stakeholders’ at your expense.”
You didn’t have a say, and you can tell, because a free market, sans this kind of “stakeholder and government” manipulation, would allow you and honest entrepreneurs to buy and sell without the government agents telling us how to do it and what to buy and sell.
And, perhaps even more insulting than that, and more infuriating than their continued hammering of the “climate” canard, is that they claim it’s for OUR good. That they are saving us money!
Using OUR tax money, Granholm and her coterie of press-release-writing bureaucrats gush:
“Over 30 years, these updated standards are expected to save Americans up to $39 billion on their energy and water bills, while also reducing nearly 71 million metric tons of dangerous carbon dioxide emissions—equivalent to the combined annual emissions of nearly 9 million homes.”
Of course, as I have noted in classrooms to students and have mentioned at MRCTV, not only does the free market cater to how and what people want to save regarding expenses, time, opportunities, and more, it allows consumers and sellers to DEFINE that which is important to THEM, and it trends towards reducing expenses and waste because that is what consumers generally show they want to do.
Only by allowing free choice can those preferences be revealed, and only by their revelation in the market can sellers offer products that work to fulfill the wants and needs of the consumers.
It is the height of arrogance, not to mention highly unconstitutional, to claim the political power over others that presupposes control over what people can buy or sell or prefer in their own lives.
And if anyone wonders about how nice and wonderful these impositions are, just as them to read this, from Granholm’s DOE Press Release:
“Compliance will be required from March 1, 2028.”
As libertarians often say, “Good ideas don’t require force.”
In a fantasy world, there always is room to imagine more “efficient” tools. But in the real world, human use of tools is based on opportunity costs and benefits. Surely, one could invest time, as well as monetary, emotional, and other goods, into new projects to, say, create a clothes dryer that works in five minutes and doesn’t use a lot of power. But if the cost of it – in research, physical resources, money, and other things – is outlandishly high, then that means a lot of other products and opportunities are lost. We have to leave our neighbors free to decide their thresholds of cost and benefit. In fact, only THEY can decide what is “outlandish” and what is valuable.
But this is typical of government. After all, government, itself, doesn’t allow us to withhold our cash. It’s a monopoly on the legal use of aggressive violence and threats.
And those threats are targeting our freedom, every day.
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— MRCTV (@mrctv) March 3, 2024